#higurashi: when they cry

[kurashikimisaki]

meakashi

[rougeprunea]

🌅 🎍 あけましておめでとうございます 🎍🌅

2023 New Year Art of Mion and Shion Sonozaki by Mimori, mangaka of Yoigoshi-hen

[wouldlesbianismsaveher]

Rena Ryuugu from Higurashi: When They Cry

[thefigureresource]

Rika Furude : Bunny ver [Higurashi: When They Cry] 1/4 scale from FREEing coming July 2024.

[anime-of-the-day]

Anime of the Day: Halloween Countdown: Higurashi: When They Cry

Alt title: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

Released: 2006

It is the summer of 83’ and Keiichi has become fast friends with Mion, Rena, Rika, and Satoko. While preparing for their local summer festival, Keiichi learns about the festival's legends. Quite a few have gone missing or turned up dead. Many think Oyashiro is to blame. However, when asking his new friends about it, they refuse to answer. In fact, the more he starts to wonder, the worse things seem to get.

[connan-l]

You know I'm actually very bitter they decided to give Rena a son instead of a daughter in Higurashi Reiwa.

I've talked a little about this before, but Rena's relationship with femininity and internalized misogyny is one of the most compelling aspects of her character to me. I’m not really sure if it was something that was entirely intended by Ryukishi, however Tsumihoroboshi still put a lot of focus on her perception of women and gender expectations particularly through her relationship to her mother and Rina; of having to perform femininity and incarnate the image of a perfect cute school girl if she wants to be truly happy and dismissing every parts of her that doens’t fit that image, all that in a way that definitely adds a very interesting layer to her character.

So the idea of her having to confront and challenge those deeply engrained ideas and prejudices once she’s an adult to raise her own daughter, especialy as a divorcee single mother, has sooo much cool potential. That would a lot more interesting and makes for a good conclusion to her character/arc too. Like sure you can make an argument there could be some stuff to do regarding this with her having a boy too, but I genuinely don’t think it’d be to the same extent.

(”But then Girl!Kihiro and Keitarou would have been way too much like the og Keiichi & Rena’s relationship--” well yeah, maybe then we could’ve given these kids actual proper personalities. Maybe we could’ve even had Keitarou be a girl too! Win-win) Also looking it up, even if it depends on the spelling of course it seems that ‘Kihiro’ is more common as a female given name, and I’m just aghhh, Ryukishi why! (There’s even this spelling I’ve seen with the characters ‘ki 希’ (hope) and ‘niji 虹’ (rainbow) (contrary to Kihiro’s actual spelling which is just ‘希比呂’ and the last two characters don’t mean much of anything) and it’s such a pretty name/meaning ;_; Let Kihiro be a girl with that name, come on--) 

(The only way I’d like the current canon would be if Kihiro is actually a trans girl buuuut I heavily doubt it dsgfdds)

Also, a bit unrelated but on the topic of Rena, I’m surprised so many people seems to have taken Rena divorcing and ending up as a single parent as a bad or mean-spirited thing, which... I mean, I can see why, but actually reading the manga I don’t think that’s the case at all?

Like, first of all divorce is not necessarily a bad thing! It can be, and yes in Rena’s case it was actively traumatic for her, but in Reiwa we’re explicitely told by Kihiro that it was a good and healthy thing for their family and that it actually improved things. They’re still in contact with the ex-husband/father and seems to have an okay relationship with him, and although we haven’t seen much of their family life Rena seems to be genuinely happy and at peace with her situation?

There’s a lot I dislike about Reiwa, but (at least for now, of course it could still change later on) Rena divorcing is really not one of them. Instead of seeing it as mean-spirited I genuinely think it feels more like Rena actually... reclaiming something bad that hurt her deeply in her childhood and turning into something positive, if that makes sense? The situation is very different from the one with her own parents, and yeah, I honestly like that. I’m hoping that imply she also maybe came to make peace with her fraught relationship with her mom and reached out to her half-sister too. (I also really like single mom Rena to be honest, especially given she’s the only one of the group who doesn’t conform to the Traditional Nuclear Family thing the others have going on, but that’s a personal preference here lol)

(....Even if yeah she still should have had a daughter I’m sorry--)

[proshippersstimming]

⚤ ⚤ ⚤ ⚤ ⚤ ⚤ ⚤ ⚤ ⚤

Keiishi (Keiichi Maebara x Shion Sonozaki) from Higurashi: When They Cry with yandere and jealously themes as requested by an anon!

[dead--maggots]

Higurashi: When they cry (ひぐらしのなく頃に)

[ghostcorr]

I’m on episode five of Higurashi: When They Cry, and I have no what’s happening but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it

[kurashikimisaki]

suuuuper late to the colour wheel trend but I wanted to make one for time loop girlies 🫶 (plus tatsuya, who is neither a girlie or in a time loop but still has the vibes of a time loop girlie)

[rougeprunea]

ひぐらしのなく頃に令   星渡し編

Higurashi: When They Cry Rei: Star-Crossing Chapter

[hybridreviews]

ANIME DISCOVERY - The GRAND FINALE: #250

There it is folks.... The final Anime Discovery review.

So… 13 years and 249 reviews of anime I have reviewed over the years. Ever since starting Anime Discovery and The Mind of the Hybrid One as a whole, my thing with this is to explore what new anime I got into while looking into what I missed in the 2000s era and further in, some anime reviews of mine have been covering the newest shows I love or hate, classics that I revisited or shows that I have…

[vicvaporwave]

this is kind of ass but i still like it a bit

[connan-l]

There was this theory going around when Higurashi Reiwa was first announced about how Sakiko could actually be Shion and Satoshi’s daughter, but because they died/disappeared for X reason Satoko then adopted her, and I admit that even now I’m still very attached to it.

Because the thing is that, like a lot of people Satoko’s portrayal and situation in Reiwa really bothers me. Technically speaking, I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with the perspective of her marrying some random person in adulthood or even for it to be a man (like, personally I definitely see Satoko as a lesbian since GouSotsu, but canonically it’s never been confirmed so Bi Satoko is still an option), but it still feel very... off to make an entire sequel series like Gou/Sotsu/Meguri that very much focuses on her explicit romantic feelings for her female friend with taking a lot of codes from yuri/queer stories, and then ending this with her having a very Normal Nuclear Family; even if it is in some parallel fragment it can’t help but leave a sour taste in my mouth.

Satoko in Reiwa just manages to makes me sad because the manga so far only portrayed her as being A Mom or A Wife, doing a job that genuinely don’t feel like her at all, and being married to a man where I don’t see what she would like about him. I’ve seen people argue that it does makes sense for Satoko to try to find this kind of stability post-canon; get married into a 'safe' family like the Kimiyoshis, who are obviously well-established and important within the village (so that it guarantees her acceptance and place in Hinamizawa), and have a kid before the others to solidify this, which, yeah, I agree --- in a way it could be a pretty interesting concept to explore. But that’s still in the perspective of if this takes place in a depressing future where Satoko never got over and confront her issues/trauma, and I very much doubt that this is something Ryukishi ever intended to explore in Reiwa at all --- or, even something that he actually intended period, I think he just wanted a next generation of kids and that’s how it ended up. (Reiwa isn’t finished, so it could still surprises me, but given the story has been very much focused on the kids so far I really doubt we’ll get this kind of insight about the adults.)

But anyway, to comes back to what I wanted to say, all of this asides I never really saw Satoko as someone who would become a mother or really want to be one. I don’t think she’d be opposed to it; and I can see an argument made for it because she’s someone who does love nurturing and taking care of her loved ones, and there could be something very meaningful about her becoming a parent and navigating this with her own past family trauma and let her heal that way. But, in an ideal world where she gets to adulthood as a more balanced, happy person, I don’t think she’d go out of her way to become a parent because she’d feel fine and safer with the family she already has with her (Satoshi, Shion, Rika and the others).

That’s why I think the only way I could see Satoko becoming a mother would be if that happens because of something out of her control where she ends up with an Accidental Child Acquisition; hence having to adopt her niece because Satoshi and Shion aren’t available. That would makes the whole situation sooo angsty but also so heartwarming, for Satoko to experience motherhood specifically in this situation, and how it’d specifically parallel her own circumstances as a child where she had to go live with her aunt and uncle after her parents’ death; and there could be so much to explore and potential to make her relationship with Sakiko both very compelling and complicated as a result of this? (Admittedly, there also could be a discussion about whether or not Satoshi would like being a father as well; it’s interesting that apparently in Reiwa, Satoshi and Shion are together but they’re the only couple without kids. I do think he’d have lots of hangups about parenthood as well because of his own trauma and how he essentially got a big part of his childhood robbed because of parentification; but that’s another topic.)

With this version, I also really love the idea that Satoshi and Shion actually named Sakiko after their baby sister...

I could totally see that when Shion announced her pregnancy, Satoko would’ve felt very happy for them but at the same time the perspective of them having a baby would suddenly make her abandonment issues kick in; because obviously that’d means she wouldn’t be Satoshi and Shion’s priority anymore and wouldn’t get to have her nii-nii and nee-nee’s undivided attention and love like she used to. And of course she’d hate herself for feeling that way and try to makes herself out to be the best aunt for the future baby...

But then Satoshi and Shion actually notices this, and then tells they’re going to name the baby after her because she’s the most important and bravest person they know and they want their daughter to takes after her the most in that :’)

Anyway it just got me thinking that it’s sad that Reiwa decided to go with every club members except Rika (and Rena kind of, given she’s a divorcee single mom) having very traditional families because I think them having more extended, patchwork families fits the original club members and their dynamic more.

[confirmation-roll]

[daisymels]